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Putri Prihatini Profile picture
@BlogTolkien
Mar 9, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
On 8 March 1939, J. R. R. Tolkien delivered a lecture at the University of St. Andrews, which was published as essay "On Fairy Stories", in which he argued that fairy tales are not just for children, describing what it means to enter this realm.

🧵1/8

🎨: J.R.R. #Tolkien A colored illustration of R...
Tolkien described the realm of fairy-story as wide, deep, and high, filled with all manner of beasts and birds, shoreless seas and stars uncounted. Beauty and perils are present together, just like how joy and sorrow "sharp as swords" are inseparable. 2/8
Tolkien also described fairy stories as any works that used the "Faerie" for stories of adventures, fantasy, morality, or satire (without making fun of or laughing at the "magic" itself). This is the world where the author becomes the "Sub-creator". 3/8
He criticized stereotypical opinions about fairy tales being exclusively for children. "Reads them as tales, that is, not studies them as curios. Adults are allowed to collect and study anything, even old theatre programmes or paper bags." 4/8
Tolkien also depicted fantasy genre as challenging and deserving respect, since it demands the creation of elaborate, immersive world from scratch, with its own internal logic. A task that requires labor and thought, which he compared with "Elvish craft." 5/8

🎨: Victo Ngai A richly detailed illustrat...
"Fantasy is a natural human activity. It does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity.... The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make." 6/8
"Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds." 7/8

🎨: Mauko Fujino An illustration of two bird...
Finally, Tolkien coined the term "eucatastrophe": the sudden joyous turn in a story that does not discount sorrow and failure, but denies the "universal defeat" and gives the fleeting glimpse of joy beyond the walls, as poignant as grief. 8/8

🎨: Lothlórien, by Ulla Thynell A whimsical illustration of...

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More from @BlogTolkien

Putri Prihatini Profile picture
Oct 13
Chocolate was once associated with witchcraft in colonial Latin America. Women traditionally prepared chocolate for drink and folk medicine, so there was fear that they practiced witchcraft through chocolate, making them subjects of Inquisition's crackdown. 1/8 #FolkloreSunday A photograph of two cups of spiced hot chocolate drink taken from above. The chocolate drink has frothy surface.
Chocolate was known as the "food of gods" and currency in ancient times. According to legend, Aztec emperor Montezuma II drank gallons of it daily for vitality. Chocolate was also consumed for strength in giving birth and menopause, or staying awake for rituals and revelries. 2/8 A photograph of round, short clay jar from ancient Mayan era, used to make chocolate drink. The jar has a single hieroglyph that depicts the word "chocolate."
Women traditionally prepared chocolate drink and the association carried as the Inquisition purged "heretical practices", including folk medicine. Historian Martha Few said that many testimonies featured chocolate, like those who feared women put potion in their morning cup. 3/8 A detail of a manuscript showing a dark-haired woman with long-sleeved striped dress. She poured chocolate from a jar in her hand, which was held high above a larger jar on the floor, to make the drink frothy.
Read 9 tweets
Putri Prihatini Profile picture
Dec 23, 2023
Letters from Father Christmas originates from Tolkien's tradition of writing illustrated letters to his children every Christmas, from 1920 to 1943, making them look like they come from a figure called "Father Christmas". 1/8

A 🧵for #BookWormSat #Christmas and #Tolkien A cover for Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien, describing Father Christmas as an old man with long white beard, red coat, and red hat, walking on the snow-covered North Pole landscape.
Every letter described Father Christmas' adventures in the North Pole, with squiggly handwriting and special stamps and envelopes to make them look real. In this first letter (1920), he reassured John Tolkien that he'd deliver toys to Oxford and drew his house for him. 2/8
A 1920 letter from Father Christmas made by Tolkien for John Tolkien. The letter was written with squiggly red ink on a brown paper, with a drawing of mistletoe on top right. the letter described how Father Christmas had drawn his house for John, asked him to keep it safely, and he would visit Oxford soon to deliver his bundle of toys.
A drawing of Father Christmas as an old man with long white beard, red coat, and red hat, walking on the snow-covered North Pole landscape. The words "From Father Christmas" and "me" were written on top and bottom left. Below it showed his house, a round white building with long stairs, surrounded by a few trees. The text "my house" was written on bottom left.
Over time, Tolkien added new characters, from Ilbereth the Elf secretary to North Polar Bear and two bear cubs, describing and drawing their shenanigans, like when the bear slipped while carrying a pile of gifts or falling (again!) when fixing the damaged roof. 3/8
A scanned image of a Christmas greeting card showing Polar Bear falling from the stairs in Father Christmas' hut, the gifts scattered around him and on the staircase as Father Christmas frantically approached from atop the stairs.
Two images from Letters from father Christmas book. The top one depicts the Polar Bear falling from the roof as he is fixing it while Father Christmas raises his hands in exasperation and worries. The second picture depicts Father Christmas on a sled drawn by reindeers on Northern Pole landscape.
Read 8 tweets
Putri Prihatini Profile picture
Nov 21, 2023
Without Christopher Tolkien (21 November 1924 - 16 January 2020), the world of #Tolkien studies and our understanding of his vast expanse of imagination would not have been like now.

A thread of birthday appreciation for #TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday 1/13

📷: Josh Dolgin A photograph of Christopher Tolkien, sitting in front of a fireplace and a wall shelf full of decorative ceramic plates and candles. He wore a coat over a green vest and checkered shirt, gazing wistfully with folded arms.
Christopher was Tolkien's number one fan, the one who understood his father's work after Tolkien himself. Starting from listening to tales of Bilbo Baggins as a kid, he assisted Tolkien in drawing maps and giving feedback during the 15-year gestation of Lord of the Rings. 2/13
He briefly served in Royal Air Force, but it didn't stop his contribution to Tolkien's writing in LOTR, since his father kept sending him parts of LOTR manuscripts. In 1945, he joined The Inklings literary club following Tolkien, where he read parts of LOTR manuscripts. 3/13
Read 13 tweets
Putri Prihatini Profile picture
Nov 18, 2023
19 fiction books by Palestinian authors: novels, short stories, and folktales.

1. My First and Only Love (2021) by Shahar Khalifeh. Nidal, an elderly exile, recounts the story when the 1948 Nakba scattered her family; a story of love and resistance from the eyes of a young girl. Cover for My First and Only Love by Sahar Khalifeh. It is turquoise and depicts two Palestinian women in traditional dresses and headdresses picking olives.
2. Salt Houses (2017) by Hala Alyan.

A story of four generations of the Yacoubs, a middle-class family in Palestine, beginning in Nablus in 1963. It focuses on migration and the struggle between staying connected with one's traditions and still finding a home in a new country. A cover art of Salt Houses by Hala Alyan. It depicts a red poppy and white jasmines growing side by side, surrounded by leaves and grasses. The background has a subtle traditional motif in white and grey.
3. Minor Detail (2017) by Adania Shibli.

This caused a stir after Frankfurt Book Fair canceled the award ceremony for the author. It depicts tragedies shared by a Bedouin-Palestinian girl in 1949 and a woman from modern-day Ramallah who read the girl's fate in newspaper archive. The cover of Minor Detail by Adania Shibli. It is yellow with superimposed green and red images of people raising their hands, a women bowing her head, a gun, and other abstract shapes.
Read 19 tweets
Putri Prihatini Profile picture
Oct 8, 2023
Chocolate was once associated with witchcraft in colonial Latin America. Women traditionally prepared chocolate for drink and folk medicine, so there was fear that they practiced witchcraft through chocolate, making them subjects of Inquisition's crackdown.
#FolkloreSunday 1/8 A photograph of two cups of spiced hot chocolate drink taken from above. The chocolate drink has frothy surface.
Chocolate was known as the "food of gods" and currency in ancient times. According to legend, Aztec emperor Montezuma II drank gallons of it daily for vitality. Chocolate was also consumed for strength in giving birth and menopause, or staying awake for rituals and revelries. 2/8 A photograph of round, short clay jar from ancient Mayan era, used to make chocolate drink. The jar has a single hieroglyph that depicts the word "chocolate."
Women traditionally prepared chocolate drink and the association carried as the Inquisition purged "heretical practices", including folk medicine. Historian Martha Few said that many testimonies featured chocolate, like those who feared women put potion in their morning cup. 3/8 A detail of a manuscript showing a dark-haired woman with long-sleeved striped dress. She poured chocolate from a jar in her hand, which was held high above a larger jar on the floor, to make the drink frothy.
Read 9 tweets
Putri Prihatini Profile picture
Sep 17, 2023
In Tolkien's works, Faerie is seen as the land of endless beauty and peril. Humility is required here, or disasters strike. The concept is also present in Hutan Larangan ("forbidden forest"), prevalent in various cultures in Indonesia. 1/8

A 🧵for #Tolkien and #FolkloreSunday A photograph of tropical forest surrounded by fog.
In Tolkien's early writing, an explorer, Eriol, was about to enter a tiny magical house called the Cottage of Lost Play. The house asked him to will himself to be as tiny as the "little folk" to enter. We can read it as a test of Eriol's humility. 2/8

🎨: Amani Warrington An illustration of a tiny white house with thatched roof and red door, built on a green hill next to a shore.
One of Tolkien's "fairy poems" showed the consequence of acting with arrogance when you got a chance to enter the Faerie: the unnamed narrator was reduced to a rambling wreck, suffering an indescribable feeling of loss. 3/8
Read 8 tweets

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